Reevely: Emilie Taman's a great NDP candidate in a bad riding

When Ottawa-Vanier New Democrat Emilie Taman knocks on doors, she’s no longer surprised when voters volunteer that they’re public servants.

People in other jobs don’t. Just people who work for the federal government. “That’s almost like code that they’re ready for change,” she says.

Local Conservatives acknowledge this problem, as long as their names aren’t attached to what they’re saying. One who’s seen the party’s own poll numbers calls the Tories’ sliding fortunes in Ottawa “the revenge of the public service.”

Taman was a public servant until August: the Public Prosecution Service of Canada fired her as a Crown lawyer for campaigning instead of showing up for work, after she was denied permission to take a leave. As an NDP candidate, she’s hoping that the “change” sentiment works for her, even though she’s running against longtime Liberal MP Mauril Bélanger.

That’s the irony for her: She’s the single Ottawa candidate who most embodies government workers’ frustration with the Conservatives, running in a riding the Conservatives have never won.

Bélanger hasn’t been part of the government that’s overseen years of cuts (the austerity years under Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin in the 1990s didn’t hurt him much), and pointedly disregarded public servants’ advice on what the government ought to do.

But he has been in office for 20 years, and if you just want “change” generally, maybe that includes changing the MP in Ottawa-Vanier. “I admire Mr. Bélanger for how long he’s been doing what he’s been doing,” Taman says backhandedly.

Ottawa-Vanier is the New Democrats’ best chance for a second Ottawa seat, after Paul Dewar’s in Ottawa Centre next door. Like Ottawa Centre, it has a university, downtown yuppies in condos, a large working-class population. The NDP vote has crept up and Bélanger’s share slipped below 40 per cent in 2011. Since the New Democrats’ breakthrough in Quebec that year, the prospect of success in other heavily francophone ridings has seemed a lot more realistic.

Bélanger hasn’t won seven elections because he’s a lazy campaigner or a crummy MP, and Taman’s lashed to a national NDP campaign that’s lost momentum. She’s still the most impressive challenger the New Democrats have found in Ottawa in quite a while.

She’s 38, a mother of three, the daughter of two lawyers (including retired Supreme Court judge and UN refugee chief Louise Arbour), married to criminal defence lawyer Michael Spratt. She worked as a staff lawyer at the Supreme Court before becoming a prosecutor.

Although she was a Crown lawyer and not a policy person, she shares many public servants’ frustration with the Tory government. It had built over years, but what propelled her into politics was the Conservatives’ recent anti-terrorism act, Bill C-51.

The new law’s enhancement of police powers bothered her. “As a justice-system participant, it was increasingly difficult to imagine myself playing a part in implementing that policy,” Taman says.

“Most lawyers, including prosecutors, believe in a fair and balanced system that protects against abuses of power by the state,” she says. “I think it’s a mistake to think that prosecutors would be in favour of a system that would lead to more convictions if they come because of infringements of people’s constitutional rights.”

Bill C-51 landed atop a heap of other Conservative justice policies that troubled her, she says. Case in point: mandatory minimum sentences for some crimes, which remove judges’ power to impose lesser sentences based on the facts they’ve heard in specific cases.

“It was done against the weight of evidence if a government is sincerely looking to reduce crime,” Taman says. “Mandatory minimums do not deter crime. The overwhelming weight of evidence says that. But they were determined.”

Despite living in Old Ottawa South now (she used to live in Ottawa-Vanier, and says she likes it because it’s a microcosm of Canada), Taman defeated three other would-be candidates for the NDP nomination and left her job without authorization, knowing she’d be fired. Whatever you think of her politics, she’s a serious person who’s put a lot on the line, the sort of person the New Democrats need to attract consistently if they’re going to contend.

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